LONDON (Reuters) -Birmingham Airport reopened its only runway on Wednesday, more than six hours after a small aircraft made an emergency landing due to landing gear failure, leaving one person with minor injuries.
Birmingham Airport said in a statement that its operations had resumed following the aircraft incident.
Woodgate Aviation, a private charter firm that is based at Belfast International Airport and owns the Beech B200 Super King Air plane, said in a statement that the “main under-carriage collapsed on touch down.”
Birmingham Airport had said in an earlier update on Wednesday that the runway was likely to remain close until 8 p.m. (1900 GMT).
All people on board the aircraft had been discharged by the emergency services. Check-in services and security screening were temporarily closed, it added.
Police said in a post on X that emergency crews responded to the incident, which occurred at around 1240 GMT.
Images shared on social media showed a small propeller aircraft stationary on the runway of Britain’s seventh busiest airport.
The aircraft had taken off at 12:11 p.m., bound for Belfast in Northern Ireland, according to plane tracking website Flightradar24.
The airport website showed that some flights have been diverted to other British airports and some departures have been canceled or delayed.
Transport minister Heidi Alexander said on X that disruption at the airport was “minimal” but she understood “how frustrating” the situation was for passengers.
The airport, which served some 13 million passengers last year, is Britain’s third largest outside London.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, additional reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar, Catarina Demony, Mark Porter and Sandra Maler)
